Your Friends Are Your Next TV Guide
Reblogged from Fast Company, by KIT EATON
Do you trust your friends? If you plan on watching television anytime soon, you better.
That’s because yesterday TVGuide.com released an updated version of its iOS app, placing social recommendations from your friends front-and-center, aggregating different TV content providers into a single portal and blurring the lines between what’s being broadcast and what’s available as archived material.
It’s the latest in a line of second screen apps we’re beginning to use on our smartphones and tablets while we watch traditional television. And it’s also a play at being an “everything in one place” app, dedicated to serving your next-gen TV needs. GetGlue tried something similar recently, because, naturally, there’s money to be made from you diving into TV content via apps. That money comes from deals such as GetGlue’s sponsorship deals with brands like Gap and Coke, and from selling detailed user analytics—a long-term goal for GetGlue. Advertising spots can also be threaded among the app, targeted based on user data.
TV Guide’s free app puts the viewer directly in control, either linking you to content being broadcast right now over the legacy TV, or seamlessly sending you off to a provider like Hulu Plus or iTunes to watch an archived episode. It places your friends’ recommendations (and perhaps celebrity recommenders, too) atop the hierarchy of discovering new content. It also lets you chat in real time about shows with your online friends—potentially letting groups of pals decide, like a viral YouTube video, to watch a particular show right now, whether it’s archived or being broadcast at that moment… [Read More]
